Wedwand would like to provide you with this Public Service Announcement.
Do not watch infomercials while consuming alcoholic beverages.
No, it’s not nearly as dangerous as drinking and driving, but it can cause damage to your bank balance.

For the most part, I generally have pretty good impulse control when I watch these. (However, there is this unexplained Mark McGwire Lunch Box I recently found in my closet, so you never know.)

One recent Saturday, we were sitting down to dinner in the living room in front of the TV when this ad for kitchen knives came on. Coincidentally, I had just that night struggled chopping vegetables with our 23 year old paring knife.

Then here comes this infomercial. They had knives to cut steak with, knives to cut chicken with, knives to cut fish with; all sorts of knives. They had one for bread, one for butter, one for cheese, one for fruit, one for vegetables, one for eggs, one for olives. I think they even had a knife to cut a knife with.

And the info guy was good. In the ad, he easily scaled a fish, cut a rock in half and perfectly sliced a piece of paper illustrating just how sharp these blades were.

Now, I don’t know if you’re like me, but on the rare occasions when I do watch one of these ads, I put a price in my head and play “over/under.” If it’s under, I will consider purchase.

So, there were like 70 knives in this set and I had the over/under at $69.99. Guess what? The price was $39.99! Suddenly, as I take another sip of beer, I’m imploring my wife to hurry up dial in the next 5 minutes before this special deal expires.

Get this, while she is on hold, there is a buy one set get one set free offer. It’s too good to be true!

Here’s the catch. Shipping is $175. Ok, I lied but shipping costs a lot. That’s where they get you if you don’t know that already. But brazened by brew, we order the damn knives anyhow and are overjoyed at our good fortune, forgetting we spent a fortune for shipping.

On Thursday, I come home from work and my wife says, “Honey, our knives came today.”

“Knives?” I think. Then in a moment of instant recollection, I say, “O wow, cool. The knives. Let me see them.”

Well, there were indeed at least 70 of them and I don’t know if your silverware drawer is like ours, but if it is, where the heck do you keep 70 knives??

Don’t get me wrong. These knives were good. They were so good, when I was preparing dinner the next evening, I cut right through my finger three times and didn’t even realize it until I noticed the vegetables I was slicing had a slight crimson tinge to them.

I don’t necessarily regret the purchase, because they are quite the fine knives. But there is no place in our silverware drawer for 70 knives. So we selected the ten or fifteen most useful ones (cause how often do you need to scale a fish or cut rocks) and put them in the drawer.

The rest are in my Mark McGwire lunch box in the closet which seems to be the perfect sized storage receptacle.

4:09 AM – Woke up in the night for natures call and looked at the clock. It was 4:09. Groggy as I was, my head started singing: “Giddy-up Giddy-up 4:09 my 4 oh 9.”

That’s when I thought to myself, “Hmm, a lot of everyday occurrences invoke a song in my head. Let’s see just how many happen in the course of a day.”

It doesn’t take much really, a phrase someone says, a name, an event and then somewhere, from some place, a song starts singing in my head. But, I’m sure that happens to you. Really, tell me it does. Tell me I’m not the only one with a head full of songs waiting to be plucked at the most minute suggestion of a song possibility.

8:15 AM – As I approach my exit off the highway, I notice something different. A half a bridge is there now that wasn’t there before the weekend. Not a whole bridge, just half a bridge. (See cover photo.) I instantly started singing, “We’re On a Road To Nowhere …come on inside. Taking that road to nowhere, we’ll take that ride.”

10:00 AM – Incoming phone call.
“Hello, this is Delilah from General Hospital.“
I can’t resist, I reply, “Hey there Delilah.” I leave out the part about “What’s it like in New York City, Oh oh oh it’s what you do to me.”
She doesn’t get it. It’s just as well.
Maybe I should have Tom Jones’d her instead and answered “Why why why, Delilah?”

1:35 – Get a new case. The party’s last name is Peoples. “Listen Peoples to what I say. I say every body’s got to have their day and don’t you know that everybody’s got to love somebody sometime …” The slow guitar riff and 60’s British beat hang in my head for the next half hour.

5:00 – Often times, there is no song that pops in my head at 5 o’clock, just a mental picture of someone pulling the tail of a prehistoric bird down at the Bedrock Quarry and Fred Flintstone yelling, “Yubba dubba do.” Because songs are on my mind today, I sing a chorus of “When I’m Out In The Street, uh o oh oh oh” just for good measure as I walk the way I want to walk out that revolving door at the end of the work day.

OK, so you may have noticed, the artists for the songs were not listed. That must mean, it’s pop quiz time at Wedwand.

The times of the songs are: 4:09. 8:15. 10:00. 1:35 & 5:00. You’re job, guess the artists in the order in which they appear.